Very informative post from Vicky Brock recently where she writes about the growing importance of the mobile device. In a survey of 22 UK ecommerce sites, Vicky reveals that up to 7% (with a median of 3.5%) of the traffic to these sites is now coming from mobile devices. And what is surprising is that these are figures for general websites – not mobile specific sites or apps.

$ Index Value is the key to quickly evaluating every page on your website.

Web analytics feature in the current edition of the Irish Marketing Journal. In his article “Web Analytics – the New Kid on the Market Research Block“, John D Byrne opens with a great quote from Hugh Hefner, who when asked about the success of the Playboy Magazine website said: “Well we had over one million hits in the first couple of days. Problem is, we don’t know if that was a million individuals visiting our site once – or one, visiting us a million times!”

This week I got a call from Peter, a website owner, asking if I could take a look at his Google Analytics setup. He had originally set up and configured his own Google Analytics account, and was very familiar with the reports. However he was confused by unusual data that had recently began to appear on his reports.

The Google Analytics Blog recently announced that a browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics would be released in coming weeks. This plug-in would “allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics”.

As of 16 March 2010, Google Analytics has being displaying homepage views as “/” rather than “/index.html”, “/index.php” etc. I have reviewed a number of client accounts on different hosting platforms and the problem exists for them all.

This situation typically occurs in Google Analytics accounts where a default homepage (e.g. index.html) has not been specified for a profile. However in this instance the problem is occurring in long-established accounts. The problem is most likely on Google’s side. Hopefully it will be rectified shortly.

An example of a Google Analytics report showing two lines of data for the homepage - "/" and "index.php"

The following are the steps required to set up a Google Analytics account. Don’t worry – it’s actually easier to carry out the process than read about it!

All steps are relatively straightforward – Google does a good job on guiding you through the process. The only step that may cause difficulty is inserting the tracking code into the HTML of your web pages. This is one of the last steps in the process.

The importance of email marketing to Irish marketing professionals was highlighted recently by AMAS in their State of the Net – Winter 2009 bulletin. Their survey of members of the Marketing Institute of Ireland indicated that 65% of marketers surveyed use email marketing campaigns to get their message out and to drive action or uptake.

AMAS survey highlighting the importance of email marketing in Ireland

With such a reliance on the effectiveness of email marketing by Irish marketing professionals, it is crucial that campaigns are tracked successfully using Google Analytics so that return on investment can be successfully monitored.

Message appearing on Google Analytics website stating that due to maintenance the Analytics system will be be unavailable on March 2nd from approximately 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM (Pacific time). For GMT this equates to 3:00pm on March 2nd to 7:00am March 3rd.

Google states that data will continue to be collected and processed during this time.

To get the most from Google Analytics you need to be sure it is installed and functioning correctly. In 12 Useful Tools for Google Analytics Administration, Brian Clifton advises that adding Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) to your website should not be a “set it and forget it” measure. He stresses the importance of monitoring pages frequently to ensure that tracking code is in place and working correctly.

Welcome to the Analytics.ie blog! My name is Paul Grealy and I’m a web analyst based in Ireland. I’ve worked in the information technology sector for about 18 years, the past 10 of which have been in web design, development and analytics.

In this web analytics blog I’ll be concentrating primarily on Google Analytics as this is one of the most popular analytics tools for small and medium sized businesses. I’ll also write about other free and inexpensive web analytic tools which are also useful.